Fate of missing people clarified
By Sara Rajabova
The fate of people who went missing during the Karabakh war in early 1990s has been clarified.
As a result of search operations carried out by the Working Group of the Azerbaijani State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons throughout 2013, the fate of another 25 people out of those who were originally registered by the commission as missing has been clarified, AzerTag news agency reported.
The names of these people have already been excluded from the list of missing people. One of them is said to have survived from battles and sieges, 5 were killed in battles, and 19, whose bodies were identified and buried were re-listed.
As of November 1, 2014, the number of people taken captive, hostage, or being lost stands at 4,016 including 3,256 servicemen and 758 civilians. And it's unknown whether the remaining two are civilians or servicemen.
Among the missing civilians, 59 are children (17 girls), 254 women, and 351 elderly people (154 women).
Among 4,016 people who have gone missing, 877 are reported to have been taken either captive or hostage.
During the conflict, 1,419 people were released. (347 female, 1,072 male, including 207 children, 287 elderly people)
The analysis of data received by the state commission showed that 554 people (104 women, 449 men) were found out to have either been killed in captivity or hostage or died of various reasons. Among them, only the names of 137 people are known, while 75 others have not yet been identified.
The bloody war, which flared up in the late 1980s due to Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor, left displaced 700,000 civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the regions adjoining it, as well as the regions bordering with Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
They are temporarily settled in more than 1,600 settlements across 62 cities and regions of Azerbaijan.
Moreover, 250,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia and became refugees due to Armenia's ethnic cleansing policy after the emergence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijanis who had displaced from their homes as result of the brutal war were forced to live in refugee camps, tents and wagons in very difficult conditions.
As a result of the military aggression of Armenia, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, almost 100,000 were injured, and 50,000 were disabled.
The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.